Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The West may have found an unexpected way to chip away at communist China’s dominance in the production of critical minerals: extracting metals from oil wells, waste streams, and discarded electronics in an attempt to scale up processing technologies at home. Illustration by The Epoch Times, Jeff Fitlow, James Tour’s Lab/Rice University, John Fredricks/The Epoch Times Instead of waiting years for new mines to open, a wave of startups is turning to existing resources to recover metals that Beijing has controlled for decades. “Chevron’s wells in just three [Texas] counties can actually produce the world supply of rhodium,” Eric Herrera, CEO of MaverickX, recently told The Epoch Times. Rhodium is the world’s most valuable precious metal, prized for its ability to neutralize toxic emissions. It sits alongside a wider class of materials that make up the hidden components in smartphones, electric vehicles, renewable energy, and even weapons. Geostrategic Weaponized Tools Rare-earth elements such as neodymium and dysprosium are not actually rare. They are abundant but …